Northern Ireland

I've been overwhelmed by the near tangible quality of social division in Northern Ireland. Growing up, I had the inaccurate impression that the conflict was undertaken by a secretive segment of the Catholic population against the British structure. For the most part, I believed that the average man and woman was fairly divorced from the larger conflict on a day to day basis. Therefore, it was rather shocking for me to become aware how this conflict divided (and still divides to a large degree) Catholic and Protestants on nearly every level of society. While it's fairly difficult to properly articulate the depth of the schism; it's become apparent that the Troubles were the most important entity in the lives of the majority of the people from Northern Ireland.